Top Pick

A local guitar hero who plays well with others

V

eteran guitarist Duke Levine can play just about anything. He has also played with just about everybody (Peter Wolf, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Aimee Mann, to name a few). Levine is one of those musicians who make the rest of the band play better, even if he’s sitting in for just one night. Ask him how old his beat-up Fender Telecaster is and he’ll say, “Older than me.” (Hint: the guitar was made in 1953.) It’s a treat to watch him play. His focus is unbreakable and it doesn’t matter if he’s in country-honk mode and attacking innocent steel with glass, or settling into a tribal jazz trance. He really can play everything. Wallace